


The Rude Awakening of Garie Tuman

by JointsMemoria



Category: Senki Zesshou Symphogear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:53:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28436433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JointsMemoria/pseuds/JointsMemoria
Summary: This is a solo I wrote specifically for a Garie RP account, mostly as a justification for her being alive YET AGAIN. This serves as the jumping off point to pretty much all future writings from me involving her.
Kudos: 1





	The Rude Awakening of Garie Tuman

A drip feed of knowledge entered the... doll?

Doll.

Doll?

Mechanical ball-joints, creaking limbs, and a ticking heart. Not just a doll. An autoscorer. More than a doll, closer to human than a doll, but more than that as well. A name scratched at the emerging consciousness, desperate to find its place.

Ga. Gar? Gar. Gar...ie.

Garie.

With the name came more. The ability to think and understand, to understand a purpose, as well as memories. She had... died. Again, as she thought further. She had died again. The first time at the hand of the songstress, but in service of a higher purpose; the second time at the hand of some pathetic beast, but in service of a noble purpose. Her Master needed her, and she would fight to the death to keep her safe, if it came down to it.

She would die again, and again, and again, and again, if she had to. That's why she had to push her way out of this chamber. Its walls felt like the inside of a coffin and, in fact, seemed to be lined with cushioning as well. Had her Master made such a nice resting place just for her? Almost reluctantly, she pressed against the surface in front of her and, to her surprise, it opened as easily as any door would.

Anyone else would have stumbled, but Garie found her footing as natural as a dancer. Old gears and joints creaked as they found their new place after so much inactivity. How long had she been in there? The chamber closed behind her, drawing her attention, letting her get a look at the etching on a brass plaque on the entrance.

"φ"

A prototype classification. She remembered this, at least, from the sheer amount of autoscorer variants her Master had made over the years. Decades. Centuries even. But that must mean...

She looked to the left, then the right, up and down. There must have been nearly a hundred of the storage coffins lining the walls, many of them crushed from what appeared to be a caved in roof with just a hint of light coming in, illuminating some moss that must have grown in over a period of years.

The coffins that weren't crushed seemed to be suffering from decades worth of water damage, while others had simply fallen. Of all these, was she really the only surviving prototype? There were some autoscorer frames scattered on the ground. Leiur, Micha, Phara... a few faces she didn't recognize, maybe from disrepair. Or maybe they were just faces she never had a chance to meet. Regardless, she needed to find a way out of this place, because...

...because...

Trying to focus on her purpose left her with an echoing sensation in her head, like a distant cry of pain, or maybe a call for help. She remembered that beast that attacked her. Like her, it seemed superficially human, but no human moved like that, or attacked like that. Not even the gear wielders. A monster is what it was, with its two cohorts. They were...

They were trying to harm her Master.

"M-ma-a-a-ster-er-er-er-er nee-nee-nee-nee-nee-nee...

Trying to form the word revealed just how out of repair she was, or how limited her prototype body was in this state. She also felt a jolt as her extremely limited energy stores tried to accommodate her broken speech, pushing her body to try and repair its speech functionality, something she immediately stopped when she realized how little she had left in her.

With this little energy, there'd be no way for her to use her powers. Manipulating water in this state would shut her down immediately, making her entirely useless. Who could she protect like that? Could she just climb? The hole looked small, but maybe there was an angle through which she could squeeze through. At least she wouldn't have to worry about her clothes being caught on anything, she realized. After all, who would seal away a prototype in a cute dress?

She'd have to take care of that after she figured her way out and made it to her Master.

Walking in this body was a struggle, but climbing was agonizing. A dancer's body was not meant for the clunky actions of moving up a pile of rocks. More agonizing, however, was the realization that she wouldn't be able to fit any more than her head and maybe an arm through the hole, and there was simply no way for her to expand it with as little energy she had left.

Peering outside as best she could, she was met with the realization that she was not anywhere near the Chateau de Tiffauges, best as she could tell. In what few directions she could look, there was nothing to see but fields of a deep green, with heavy overcast skies. The grass was heavy, thick, not the kind that would be seen around Tokyo, where the Chateau was currently located. Where was she then? Her Master had several testing facilities apart from the Chateau, but it was hard to narrow down where she was from just grass.

And there was the other concern. She knew her Master was still alive, she could feel it. This wasn't just some sentimental feeling or a desperate hope that she was alive, but she simply knew it. She could feel the way only her energy could radiate, even if it felt so distant. Was she far away, or was she slipping away? Hurt, maybe even dying? If there was a feeling at all, it was despair at being unable to help.

But such feelings were draining on her reserves. She couldn't focus on that. Instead, she mustered up everything she had as she picked up a nearby rock and started hitting at the edges of the opening, once, twice, then weakly a third time, and then, finally, a pathetic fourth time, followed by her vision blurring, darkening, and then her hearing the sounds of impact as her body forced itself into a temporary shutdown due to a lack of energy.

Garie was, for lack of a better word, unconscious.

She didn't know how much time had passed since she had collapsed, but that wasn't important. The earth beneath and above her was shaking and the sky had turned blood red. More frightening still was that she could only barely feel her Master's energy. Something must have happened while she was collapsed, filling her with self loathing at her inability to act, and dread that her Master may be beyond saving.

But these emotions had no place with this little energy, especially when it was taking everything she had to find new footing. She gripped onto the hole leading to what should have been her escape and pulled herself forward. Was it bigger? There were clumps of grass to either side that must have fallen in during the tremors. Maybe there was hope still. Her arms extended outward and she gripped the grass in front of her. It WAS bigger. She pulled herself forward, managing to get her upper body out of the hole before...

Another violent shake, this time causing the entire rock ceiling behind her to cave inward, only just barely sparing her legs from being destroyed by the rubble. She was free!

Free and... surrounded by an unfamiliar landscape. In almost all directions, nothing but green, aside from one where a towering spire of black and red shot so far up into the sky that it was covered by clouds well before the top. At its base, a small town, and from that town.

Screams.

Humans.

Terrified humans, running scared, their homes collapsing.

Terrified humans from which she could drain energy from and fuel herself for, hopefully, long enough for her reunion with her Master.

Nobody would miss one, maybe two. As long as she felt her Master's energy in this world, she would do anything. The entire town was nothing compared to the love she felt for Carol—

No, that was too draining an emotion, too familiar a thought, too intimate a thought to have about her Master. She had a goal, and, with that goal in mind, she made her shaking steps towards the village.

Part of why she wasn't able to recognize where she was, and part of why it was so hard to feel her Master's energy, was because she clearly wasn't in Japan, or even on the continent of Asia. The buildings were distinctly European, and many of the clothes the fleeing people were wearing were knit from local materials, none of them native to where the Chateau was.

A man, clearly panicked and not thinking straight, ran up to her, grabbing her by the shoulders and shouting "Auttakaa! Vaimoni on vaara—"

Had he not been cut off by the realization that he was gripping a human sized doll by the shoulders, he certainly would have been cut off by Garie's kiss. The man's memories flowed into her, showing how the tower that had erupted in the middle of town had split his house in two, followed by his wife being pinned by the collapse of the rest of the building.

Even taking this little from him, however, seemed to fill up her entire energy reserves. The man collapsed from the shock, rather than having been completely drained, but Garie felt like she could run for weeks on what must have only been a couple hours of memories.

There wasn't enough, though. She needed a way to get to her master, and that involved finding transportation. He was speaking Finnish, and Finland was a long, long way from Japan. She leaned down and whispered "Sorry, but your wife simply isn't as important as what I have to do." and kissed him again. Rather than drain him completely, she did a targeted search of his memories. Cars, boats, planes, trains, anything, as well as any potentially relevant operating instructions.

He had a car and a boat, but there was a private airport only a hundred kilometers west of where they were, so she'd be taking the car. His name was Olli, and his wife's name was Alisa. They had been friends since childhood, and had a daught-

None of that was important. She returned those memories to him like she was spitting out rotten food and ran to where she knew the car was, taking his keys with her.

It was going to be a long trip to Japan, and she simply hoped there was still time to help her Master.


End file.
